sickly

comparative sicklier · superlative sickliest

1. Frequently ill or in poor health; weakly.

   a sickly child

   3 more examples

   1759, Tobias Smollett, letter dated 16 March, 1759, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London: Charles Dilly, 1791, Volume 1, p. 190, … the boy is a sickly lad, of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for his Majesty’s service.

   She is unfortunately of a sickly constitution, which has prevented her making that progress in many accomplishments which she could not otherwise have failed of;

   1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter 14, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 151

   [...] the sharp-scented bottle of crystals that sickly Cousin Bertha had carried to ward off fainting spells.

   1982, Anne Tyler, chapter 1, in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, New York: Ballantine, published 2008, page 4

   Synonyms: valetudinarian

2. Not in good health; (somewhat) sick.

   1850, Charlotte Brontë, letter dated 29 April, 1850, in Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, London: Smith, Elder, 1857, Chapter 6, p. 157, Papa continues far from well; he is often very sickly in the morning,

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   Yes, bring me word, boy, if thy lord look well, For he went sickly forth:

   1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iv]

   For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep [i.e. have died].

   1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Corinthians 11:30

   1782, Samuel Johnson, letter dated 20 March, 1782, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London: Charles Dilly, 1791, Volume 2, p. 419, The season was dreary, I was sickly, and found the friends sickly whom I went to see.

   Miguel’s temperature was normal that day, though he was still sickly and restless.

   1958, Muriel Spark, chapter 9, in Robinson, New York: New Directions, published 2003, page 128

3. Characterized by poor or unhealthy growth. (of a plant)

   [...] the good wheat on this land had turned sickly and yellow.

   1931, Pearl S. Buck, chapter 27, in The Good Earth, New York: Modern Library, published 1944, page 236

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   With the aid of the marigolds the roses flourished; in the control beds they were sickly and drooping.

   1962, Rachel Carson, chapter 6, in Silent Spring, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 79

4. Appearing ill, infirm or unhealthy; giving the appearance of illness.

   a sickly pallor

   3 more examples

   1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, London: T. Payne and Son, and T. Cadell, Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 9, p. 121, … she exhibited a countenance so wretched, and a complection so sickly, that Cecilia was impressed with horror at the sight.

   [...] he saw him arrive with his usual florid appearance: had he come pale and sickly, Sandford had been kind to him; but in apparent good health and spirits, he could not form his mouth to tell him he was “glad to see him.”

   1791, Elizabeth Inchbald, chapter 12, in A Simple Story, volume 3, London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, pages 161–162

   Yossarian [...] could not wipe from his mind the excruciating image of the barefoot boy with sickly cheeks [...]

   1961, Joseph Heller, chapter 39, in Catch-22, New York: Dell

5. Shedding a relatively small amount of light; (of light) not very bright.

   The Moon grows sickly at the sight of day.

   1665, John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, London: H. Herringman, published 1667, act II, page 17

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   Night, and all her sickly dews, Her Spectres wan, and Birds of boding cry,

   1757, Thomas Gray, Odes, Dublin: G. Faulkner and J. Rudd, page 5

   Mr. Moore haunted his mill, his mill-yard, his dye-house, and his warehouse, till the sickly dawn strengthened into day.

   1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Hollow’s Cottage”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 85

   It [the match] lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a robust flame.

   1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXII, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, →OCLC, page 235

   Duncan saw the men through a haze of wire and cigarette smoke and sickly, artificial light;

   2006, Sarah Waters, The Night Watch, London: Virago, 1944, section 2, p. 226

   Synonyms: faint, pale, wan

6. Lacking intensity or vigour.

   a sickly smile

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   a sickly winter sun

   What man of soul would [...] run, Day after day, the still-returning round Of life’s mean offices, and sickly joys; But in compassion to mankind?

   1730, James Thomson, The Tragedy of Sophonisba, London: A. Millar, act II, scene 1, page 19

   [...] my credulous heart [...] fondly loves to cherish The feeble glimmering of a sickly hope.

   1779, Hannah More, The Fatal Falsehood, London: T. Cadell, act II, page 27

   He held a vast but carefully concealed distaste for all things American […] their manners, their bastard architecture and sickly arts … and their blind, pathetic, arrogant belief in their superiority long after their sun had set.

   1961, Robert A. Heinlein, chapter 19, in Stranger in a Strange Land, New York: Avon, →OCLC

   Synonyms: faint, feeble, insipid, weak

7. Associated with poor moral or mental well-being.

   [...] I know how you came to despise all that sickly Wagnerian idiocy and bombast.

   1964, Saul Bellow, Herzog, New York: Viking, page 319

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   The slightest distress, whether real or fictitious, touched him to the quick, and his soul laboured under a sickly sensibility of the miseries of others.

   1766, [Oliver Goldsmith], chapter 3, in The Vicar of Wakefield: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Salisbury, Wiltshire: […] B. Collins, for F[rancis] Newbery, […], →OCLC, page 27

   These were not the ravings of imbecility, the sickly effusions of distempered brains;

   1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, “The Same Subject Continued [The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed]”, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC, page 77

   Don’t squander the gold of your days [...] trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age.

   1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter 2, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 33

   That he had some sickly compulsion neurosis, they said, was very plain for all eyes to see.

   2018, Anna Burns, Milkman, London: Faber & Faber, part 4

   Synonyms: unhealthy

8. Tending to produce nausea.

   a sickly smell; sickly sentimentality

   4 more examples

   ‘Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly, Their scent comes rich and sickly?’—‘A scaled and hooded worm.’

   1865, Christina Rossetti, “Amor Mundi”, in Goblin Market; The Prince’s Progress; and Other Poems, London: Macmillan, published 1875, page 286

   […] it warn’t no perfumery neither, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things;

   1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 23, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, pages 197-198

   […] the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine [...] had absolutely upset my nerve.

   1895 May 29, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 4, in The Time Machine: An Invention, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, page 32

   He had scanty discouraged hair the color of tow, and a sickly, unpleasant breath.

   1944, Katherine Anne Porter, “The Leaning Tower”, in The Leaning Tower and Other Stories, New York: Harcourt, Brace, page 173

   Synonyms: nauseating, sickening

9. Overly sweet.

   The honey tasted sickly in his mouth.

   1950, Mervyn Peake, chapter 80, in Gormenghast, New York: Ballantine, published 1968, page 562

   2 more examples

   […] he was again tasting the sickly welter of melted ice cream on his plate.

   1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter IX, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, page 123

   After a meal of bread, bacon, rum and bitter stewed tea sickly with sugar, we went up through the broken trees to the east of the village and up a long trench to battalion headquarters.

   1929 November, Robert Graves, chapter XII, in Good-bye to All That: An Autobiography, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 132

   Synonyms: cloying, saccharine

10. obsoleteMarked by the occurrence of illness or disease (of a period of time).

    This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

    c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii]

    2 more examples

    a. 1768, Laurence Sterne, undated letter in Original Letters, London: Logographic Press, 1788, pp. 110-111, … if I thought the sentiments of your last letter were not the sentiments of a sickly moment—if I could be made to believe, for an instant, that they proceeded from you, in a sober, reflecting condition of your mind—I should give you over as incurable,

    [...] the three years immediately following the last period [...] were years so sickly that the births were sunk to 10, 229, and the burials raised to 15, 068.

    1798, Thomas Malthus, chapter 7, in An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, page 115

11. obsoleteTending to produce disease or poor health.

    a sickly autumn; a sickly climate

    2 more examples

    Has some sickly eastern waste Sent us a wind to parch us at a blast?

    1782, William Cowper, “The Progress of Error”, in Poems, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC, page 54

    Not far it [the water] runs before it finds a plain In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy, And oft ’tis wont in summer to be sickly.

    1867, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, transl., The Divine Comedy: Inferno, London: Routledge, Canto 20, lines 79-81, p. 64

    Synonyms: insalubrious, unhealthy, unwholesome

present singular third person sicklies · participle present sicklying · participle past sicklied · past sicklied

1. archaicliterarytransitiveTo make (something) sickly.

   Thy Drudge contrives, and in our full career Sicklies our hopes with the pale hue of Fear;

   1763, Charles Churchill, An Epistle to William Hogarth, London: for the author, page 12

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   Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

   c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]

   […]a cancer gnawing at the root of happiness, defeating every aim at permanent good in this world, and sicklying all sublunary joys[…]

   1840, S. M. Heaton, edited by George Heaton, Thoughts on the Litany, by a naval officer’s orphan daughter, London: William Edward Painter, Section 4, p. 58

   He evidently thinks the sweet little innocents never heard or thought of such a thing before, and would go on burying their curly heads in books, and sicklying their rosy faces with “the pale cast of thought” till the end of time[…]

   1862, Gail Hamilton, “Men and Women”, in Country Living and Country Thinking, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, page 109

   Ockham was critical of so many of his fellows for sicklying over theology with the obscurities of philosophy.

   2000, Ninian Smart, chapter 9, in World Philosophies, New York: Routledge, page 207

2. intransitiverareTo become sickly.

   1889, Samuel Cox, An Expositor’s Notebook, London: Richard D. Dickinson, 7th edition, Chapter 26, p. 364, But the seven most prominent Apostles […] still hang together, their hearts tormented with eager yet sad questionings, their hopes fast sicklying over with the pale hues of doubt.

comparative more sickly · superlative most sickly

1. In a sick manner; in a way that reflects or causes sickness.

   sickly pale; to cough sickly

   4 more examples

   […] he sickly guess’d How lone he was once more, and sadly press’d His empty arms together […]

   1818, John Keats, Endymion, London: Taylor and Hessey, Book 2, lines 859-861, p. 93

   The dazed man stared sickly at Casy.

   1939, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, New York: Viking, published 1962, Chapter , p. 364

   For ten brutal minutes he was in torment, then the pain gradually eased. He felt sickly limp but relieved, thankful for his good health.

   1961, Bernard Malamud, A New Life, Penguin, published 1968, Chapter , p. 185

   The creaseless horizontal face of the giant smiled sickly, leering.

   2010, Rowan Somerville, chapter 9, in The End of Sleep, New York: Norton, page 66